For me, tina, it's him being separate from Merry that makes it so believable.

I agree. He is def. lost and has to consider each thing he does more without Merry, but he had already taken the oath in front of Denethor. He has taken initiative there - so why be so freaked out about killing one orc (OK that is three times his size) besides, of course, the fact that PJ wanted me to make me weep for two solid hours?

I am just nitpicking, I know. I just struck me how Pippin is not really wimpy at all on re-watch.

eta: context

he had already taken the oath in front of Denethor. He has taken initiative there

And he questioned its meaning almost right afterwards. He's goodhearted and impetuous -- if he had Merry with him, he'd do absolutely anything, because he wouldn't have to consider the implications.

But it morphs hand in hand with his relationship with Gandalf -- as Pippin becomes more introspective, realises he just can and doesn't need his other half for momentum, Gandalf shifts from scolding to such delightful fondness.

His story is my favourite of them all. Loss of innocence, especially through battle, always gets me.

That whole oathtaking scene was brilliantly done, both in the way it was acted and the way it was shot. The focus is on Pippin during the oathtaking, then he stands just as Denethor says "...oathbreaking with vengence," and we see both his and Faramir's heraldry on their chests at the same level on screen, and the focus immediately shifts to Faramir, who reacts to that last line as his father's dig against him that it was intended to be.

Heh, when Gandalf turns around and realizes that the "Fool of a Took" just saved his, the mighty Gandalf the White's, life...

His story is my favourite of them all.

It's hard to say which individual character's story is my favorite in the movie...RotK gave me INSANE love for Sam that I didn't know I had - even beyond the big love I have for book!Sam. But Merry and Pippin, both individually and together, (Individually, I enjoy Merry's story so much more in the book than I do the movie.) are my emotional buttons in the movies - much more so than any other storyline or character.

That whole oathtaking scene was brilliantly done, both in the way it was acted and the way it was shot.

Oh yes.

The focus is on Pippin during the oathtaking, then he stands just as Denethor says "...oathbreaking with vengence,"

Ah, Kathy, if only he did say "oathbreaking with vengeance". Maybe he will in the EE.

t rassenfrassen trust the audience, trust the book, PJ, bitter tag never closes

OK, I'm getting my Denethor lines confused. I know he said something different in the film than in the book at that point, but I thought it was "vengence"--what was it in the film?

He says "disloyalty with vengeance" and I don't know why they changed it. Maybe they were worried about "oathbreaking" coming across clearly to the audience. I'm pretty invested in "oathbreaking with vengeance" (it's been part of the fealty oath in several SCA kingdoms for thirty years), and first, I didn't think he was going to use the scene, then he comes back to it, and then they mangled the line. It was a grr ... arrgh moment.

I knew "vengence" was involved somehow! I think that the "disloyalty" part came because he was shifting the conversation from Pippin to Faramir, so it was less of a warning to a new guardsman than an insult to his son's decision-making abilities. Watch Faramir face in the background as Denethor says it--you can see him just barely flinch.

I saw the whole lembas incident as being the replacement for the Choices chapter, at least in terms of being Sam's low point.

I can see as how Choices is problematic, for rendering to screen, but what they came up with instead was kind of -- silly. For one thing, where does Sam think he is going, climbing down the Stairs? Right back into the arms of the Huge Army O' Doom?? For another, it allowed Gollum to have far more storyline than he probably ought. For all it's emotionally about Frodo and Sam, it's Gollum who gets the screen time and the narrative importance.

So, they had to externalize the struggle somehow, and the best way to drive Sam to his worst moment ever was by having Frodo turn on him.

Well, the other problem is that Choices isn't entirely about Sam's despair; it's about his, literally, being forced to make his own choices. And although I think a great deal of the chapter's events would come out awful on screen, I really really wanted to see Sam absolutely fall apart -- not because of malice, but because of his own fear of powerfulness. The most important decision ever made in the novel is Sam taking up the ring himself, and the film chooses not to show us that moment.

Word choice is funny. On the Pelennor Fields, Eowyn says "I will kill you if you touch him" rather than "smite", and okay, smite is a hard word, but earlier on we already had Gandalf describe how he beat up the balrog and "smote his ruin on the mountainside."

Maybe only distinguished Englishmen get to say the $0.50 words?